Wednesday 4th October: Social media traffic craters

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We all knew things had got pretty bad with referrals to publishers from social media. But I didn’t realise how bad (and how fast) until I saw this chart.

Twitter’s decline is in some ways expected following - to put it politely - a somewhat chaotic takeover from Musk. But that Facebook tumble from just under 120 million three years ago to just 21.4 million today speaks volumes about where the tech giant sees news on the platform.

Noted that this is just measuring traffic to top news sites. However it’s generally reflective of our experiences too here at Media Voices, for Twitter at least. This must be utterly devastating for publishers who relied on social media referrals even partially for traffic and revenue.

I’m going to sneak a second related story in here - that Meta is planning to charge $14 a month for ad-free Instagram or Facebook, in order to appease European regulators. Give it another 12 months, and paying for a social media platform could well be the new normal. Is that thanks to Musk’s bold ‘experiments’ with X, or was it inevitable as regulatory pressure grew? You know where to go to start a discussion…

Future has launched a new print publication designed to “meet consumer and advertiser demand for high-quality premium lifestyle and luxury content”. The luxury sector has remained pretty resilient but to commit to launching a publication in print (which is definitely not Future's core focus any more) is a pretty big vote of confidence in the format. This week’s episode on ‘What kind of idiots still make magazines?’ is well-timed.

The cost-of-living crisis is causing people to cancel their news subscriptions, according to new research by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Nearly one in six cancelled or negotiated prices, citing the squeeze on household budgets. Having to cough up yet more cash each month for social media is going to go down well then.

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